


cloudbear's poetry collection

by cloudbear



Category: Original Work
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-27
Updated: 2019-09-13
Packaged: 2019-10-17 22:43:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 32
Words: 5,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17569331
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cloudbear/pseuds/cloudbear
Summary: my poems and the poems of others





	1. "The Invitation" by Oriah Mountain Dreamer (1999)

**Author's Note:**

> [source](http://www.davidpbrown.co.uk/poetry/oriah-mountain-dreamer.html)  
> complete credit goes to the original author

It doesn't interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing.

It doesn't interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn't interest me what planets are squaring your moon. I want to know if you have touched the centre of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life's betrayals or have become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain.

I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it, or fade it, or fix it.

I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own; if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, be realistic, remember the limitations of being human.

It doesn't interest me if the story you are telling me is true. I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself. If you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul. If you can be faithless and therefore trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see Beauty even when it is not pretty every day. And if you can source your own life from its presence.

I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine, and still stand at the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, 'Yes.'

It doesn't interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up after the night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone and do what needs to be done to feed the children.

It doesn't interest me who you know or how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the centre of the fire with me and not shrink back.

It doesn't interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you from the inside when all else falls away.

I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.


	2. "Among School Children" by William Butler Yeats

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [source](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43293/among-school-children)  
> complete credit goes to the original author

**I**

I walk through the long schoolroom questioning;  
A kind old nun in a white hood replies;  
The children learn to cipher and to sing,  
To study reading-books and history,  
To cut and sew, be neat in everything  
In the best modern way—the children's eyes  
In momentary wonder stare upon  
A sixty-year-old smiling public man.

 

**II**

I dream of a Ledaean body, bent  
Above a sinking fire, a tale that she  
Told of a harsh reproof, or trivial event  
That changed some childish day to tragedy—  
Told, and it seemed that our two natures blent  
Into a sphere from youthful sympathy,  
Or else, to alter Plato's parable,  
Into the yolk and white of the one shell.

 

**III**

And thinking of that fit of grief or rage  
I look upon one child or t'other there  
And wonder if she stood so at that age—  
For even daughters of the swan can share  
Something of every paddler's heritage—  
And had that colour upon cheek or hair,  
And thereupon my heart is driven wild:  
She stands before me as a living child.

 

**IV**

Her present image floats into the mind—  
Did Quattrocento finger fashion it  
Hollow of cheek as though it drank the wind  
And took a mess of shadows for its meat?  
And I though never of Ledaean kind  
Had pretty plumage once—enough of that,  
Better to smile on all that smile, and show  
There is a comfortable kind of old scarecrow.

 

**V**

What youthful mother, a shape upon her lap  
Honey of generation had betrayed,  
And that must sleep, shriek, struggle to escape  
As recollection or the drug decide,  
Would think her son, did she but see that shape  
With sixty or more winters on its head,  
A compensation for the pang of his birth,  
Or the uncertainty of his setting forth?

 

**VI**

Plato thought nature but a spume that plays  
Upon a ghostly paradigm of things;  
Solider Aristotle played the taws  
Upon the bottom of a king of kings;  
World-famous golden-thighed Pythagoras  
Fingered upon a fiddle-stick or strings  
What a star sang and careless Muses heard:  
Old clothes upon old sticks to scare a bird.

 

**VII**

Both nuns and mothers worship images,  
But those the candles light are not as those  
That animate a mother's reveries,  
But keep a marble or a bronze repose.  
And yet they too break hearts—O Presences  
That passion, piety or affection knows,  
And that all heavenly glory symbolise—  
O self-born mockers of man's enterprise;

 

**VIII**

Labour is blossoming or dancing where  
The body is not bruised to pleasure soul,  
Nor beauty born out of its own despair,  
Nor blear-eyed wisdom out of midnight oil.  
O chestnut tree, great rooted blossomer,  
Are you the leaf, the blossom or the bole?  
O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,  
How can we know the dancer from the dance?


	3. "Choices" by Tess Gallagher

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [source](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48950/choices)  
> complete credit goes to the original author

I go to the mountain side  
of the house to cut saplings,  
and clear a view to snow  
on the mountain. But when I look up,  
saw in hand, I see a nest clutched in  
the uppermost branches.  
I don’t cut that one.  
I don’t cut the others either.  
Suddenly, in every tree,   
an unseen nest  
where a mountain   
would be.


	4. "Asking the Way" by Ko Un

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [source](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/57527/asking-the-way)  
> complete credit goes to the original author; translation by Suji Kwock Kim and Sunja Kim Kwock

You fools who ask what god is  
should ask what life is instead.  
Find a port where lemon trees bloom.  
Ask about places to drink in the port.  
Ask about the drinkers.  
Ask about the lemon trees.  
Ask and ask until nothing’s left to ask.


	5. "The Mower" by Philip Larkin

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [source](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48423/the-mower-56d229a740294)  
> complete credit goes to the original author

The mower stalled, twice; kneeling, I found   
A hedgehog jammed up against the blades,   
Killed. It had been in the long grass.

I had seen it before, and even fed it, once.   
Now I had mauled its unobtrusive world   
Unmendably. Burial was no help:

Next morning I got up and it did not.  
The first day after a death, the new absence   
Is always the same; we should be careful

Of each other, we should be kind   
While there is still time.


	6. "Always" by Pablo Neruda

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [source](https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/761560-i-am-not-jealous-of-what-came-before-me-come)  
> complete credit goes to the original author. translator unknown

I am not jealous  
of what came before me. 

Come with a man  
on your shoulders,  
come with a hundred men in your hair,  
come with a thousand men between your breasts and your feet,  
come like a river  
full of drowned men  
which flows down to the wild sea,  
to the eternal surf, to Time! 

Bring them all  
to where I am waiting for you;  
we shall always be alone,  
we shall always be you and I  
alone on earth,  
to start our life!


	7. "My Collection" by cloudbear

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> original work; written circa 2016

Some collect stamps, some collect cards,  
some collect sticks found in backyards.  
I collect names, and memories, and thoughts;  
I collect people in little snapshots.


	8. "The Tree" by cloudbear

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> original work. written circa 2017

There is nothing quite like a tree;  
his verdant foliage, reaching for the sun,  
his twisting roots, the soil overrun,  
his bark, like an impressionist painting,  
his wooded crown, to catch the clouds’ raining,  
his sinewed trunk, the framework of his being,  
his woven knots, those eyes all-seeing.  
There is nothing quite like a tree;  
for he is more alive than you or me.


	9. "Dada Poem" by cloudbear

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm sure i did this wrong, but a poem is a poem x)  
> original work. written january 27, 2019

i've felt soil -  
leaves -  
soft mud,  
Mother -  
heathers,  
verdant Rain, color -  
feeling, desire.  
roll in nature,  
in hard earth,  
loaf in dirt,  
moss, grass, trees,  
eternity.


	10. "Rain" by cloudbear

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> original work. written circa 2015

The clouds roll, dark, menacing, ominous.  
It starts as a gentle mist,  
But soon it is an assailing torrent.  
They are the teardrops of angels,  
Bottled up emotions spilling out,  
Soaking the earth,  
Thrumming, pelting, battering, drumming,  
Coming down in buckets.  
It is a giver and taker of life.  
It fades,  
From a torrential downpour  
To a shower, a drizzle, cold and refreshing,  
Steadily falling,  
Drops to a soft whisper,  
Until all that is left is wet beads,  
Glistening on blades of grass.


	11. INTERLUDE: seven haikus

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> these are really all over the place; some are serious things i'm genuinely proud of. some are little memories. others are downright silly. they're listed chronologically - enjoy!  
> original works. written starting in 2017.

**I**

sitting on the couch,  
eating some lo mein with mom.  
we should be working.

**II**

"meet the robinsons":  
got a bootleg from grandpop.  
i forgot the plot.

**III**

nothing mattered then.  
it was just me and the ferns,  
gazing at the sky.

**IV**

my legs are so numb.  
(walked across the golden gate.)  
why did i do this?

**V**

japan to my right,  
china to my left, where am  
i? san francisco. 

**VI**

i've seen cliff faces  
taller than any high rise.  
we’ve got it all wrong.

**VII**

jumping through the waves  
just the two of us, as one -  
“promise you’ll hold on.”


	12. "Sonnet IX: There Where the Waves Shatter" by Pablo Neruda

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [source](https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/sonnet-ix-there-where-the-waves-shatter/)  
> complete credit goes to the original author. translator unknown.

There where the waves shatter on the restless rocks  
the clear light bursts and enacts its rose,  
and the sea-circle shrinks to a cluster of buds,  
to one drop of blue salt, falling.

O bright magnolia bursting in the foam,  
magnetic transient whose death blooms  
and vanishes--being, nothingness--forever:  
broken salt, dazzling lurch of the sea.

You & I, Love, together we ratify the silence,  
while the sea destroys its perpetual statues,  
collapses its towers of wild speed and whiteness:

because in the weavings of those invisible fabrics,  
galloping water, incessant sand,  
we make the only permanent tenderness.


	13. "Blackberry-Picking" by Seamus Heaney

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [source](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/50981/blackberry-picking)  
> complete credit goes to the original author.

_for Philip Hobsbaum_

Late August, given heavy rain and sun  
For a full week, the blackberries would ripen.  
At first, just one, a glossy purple clot  
Among others, red, green, hard as a knot.  
You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet  
Like thickened wine: summer's blood was in it  
Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for  
Picking. Then red ones inked up and that hunger  
Sent us out with milk cans, pea tins, jam-pots  
Where briars scratched and wet grass bleached our boots.  
Round hayfields, cornfields and potato-drills  
We trekked and picked until the cans were full,  
Until the tinkling bottom had been covered  
With green ones, and on top big dark blobs burned  
Like a plate of eyes. Our hands were peppered  
With thorn pricks, our palms sticky as Bluebeard's.

We hoarded the fresh berries in the byre.  
But when the bath was filled we found a fur,  
A rat-grey fungus, glutting on our cache.  
The juice was stinking too. Once off the bush  
The fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour.  
I always felt like crying. It wasn't fair  
That all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot.  
Each year I hoped they'd keep, knew they would not.


	14. "When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer" by Walt Whitman

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [source](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45479/when-i-heard-the-learnd-astronomer)  
> complete credit goes to the original author

When I heard the learn’d astronomer,   
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,   
When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,   
When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,   
How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,   
Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself,   
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,   
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.


	15. "Things We Carry on the Sea" by Wang Ping

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [source](https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/things-we-carry-sea)  
> complete credit goes to the original author

We carry tears in our eyes: good-bye father, good-bye mother

We carry soil in small bags: may home never fade in our hearts

We carry names, stories, memories of our villages, fields, boats

We carry scars from proxy wars of greed

We carry carnage of mining, droughts, floods, genocides

We carry dust of our families and neighbors incinerated in mushroom clouds

We carry our islands sinking under the sea

We carry our hands, feet, bones, hearts and best minds for a new life

We carry diplomas: medicine, engineer, nurse, education, math, poetry, even if they mean nothing to the other shore

We carry railroads, plantations, laundromats, bodegas, taco trucks, farms, factories, nursing homes, hospitals, schools, temples…built on our ancestors’ backs

We carry old homes along the spine, new dreams in our chests

We carry yesterday, today and tomorrow

We’re orphans of the wars forced upon us

We’re refugees of the sea rising from industrial wastes

And we carry our mother tongues  
爱(ai)，حب (hubb), ליבע (libe), amor, love  
平安 (ping’an), سلام (salaam), shalom, paz, peace   
希望 (xi’wang), أمل (’amal), hofenung, esperanza, hope, hope, hope

As we drift…in our rubber boats…from shore…to shore…to shore…


	16. "Digging" by Seamus Heaney

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [source](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47555/digging)  
> complete credit goes to the original author

Between my finger and my thumb   
The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.

Under my window, a clean rasping sound   
When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:   
My father, digging. I look down

Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds   
Bends low, comes up twenty years away   
Stooping in rhythm through potato drills   
Where he was digging.

The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft   
Against the inside knee was levered firmly.  
He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep  
To scatter new potatoes that we picked,  
Loving their cool hardness in our hands.

By God, the old man could handle a spade.   
Just like his old man.

My grandfather cut more turf in a day  
Than any other man on Toner’s bog.  
Once I carried him milk in a bottle  
Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up  
To drink it, then fell to right away  
Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods  
Over his shoulder, going down and down  
For the good turf. Digging.

The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap  
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge  
Through living roots awaken in my head.  
But I’ve no spade to follow men like them.

Between my finger and my thumb  
The squat pen rests.  
I’ll dig with it.


	17. "Scaffolding" by Seamus Heaney (1966)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [source](https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/scaffolding)  
> complete credit goes to the original author

Masons, when they start upon a building,  
Are careful to test out the scaffolding;

Make sure that planks won’t slip at busy points,  
Secure all ladders, tighten bolted joints.

And yet all this comes down when the job’s done  
Showing off walls of sure and solid stone.

So if, my dear, there sometimes seem to be  
Old bridges breaking between you and me

Never fear. We may let the scaffolds fall  
Confident that we have built our wall.


	18. "Jim" by cloudbear

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> original work; written 3 february 2019 for the prompt "admiration"

Our world is full of darkness;  
cold, shadowy streets  
black suits, shoes  
grey steel machines  
hunger, excess, greed  
absences of love.

Your worlds are full of light;  
bustling neighborhoods, friends  
princesses, crystal balls  
adventures and song  
dancing, color, feeling  
abundances of love.

_"Dance your cares away,_  
_Worry's for another day."_  
Your worlds are drops of dreams  
Of a life filled with sunbeams.


	19. "Freedom Train" by Langston Hughes (1947)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [source](http://org.coloradomesa.edu/~blaga/421/Freedom_Train.html)  
> complete credit goes to the original author

I read in the papers about the Freedom Train 

I heard on the radio about the Freedom Train 

I seen folks talking about the Freedom Train 

Lord, I've been a-waitin for the Freedom Train! 

Washington, Richmond, Durham, Chatanooga, Atlanta 

Way cross Georgia. 

Lord, Lord, Lord 

way down in Dixie the only trains I see's 

Got a Jim-Crow coaches set aside for me. 

I hope their ain't no Jim Crow on the Freedom Train, 

No back door entrance to the Freedom Train, 

No sign FOR COLORED on the Freedom Train, 

No WHITE FOLKS ONLY on the Freedom Train. 

I'm gonna check up. 

I'm gonna to check up on this 

Freedom Train. 

Who is the engineer on the Freedom Train? 

Can a coal-black man drive the Freedom Train? 

Or am I still a porter on the Freedom Train? 

Is there ballot boxes on the Freedom Train? 

Do colored folks vote on the Freedom Train? 

When it stops in Mississippi, will it be made plain 

Everybody's got a right to board the Freedom Train? 

I'm gonna check up. 

I'm gonna to check up on this 

Freedom Train. 

The Birmingham station's marked COLORED and WHITE. 

The white folks go left 

The colored go right. 

They even got a segregated lane. 

Is that the way to get aboard the Freedom Train? 

I'm gonna check up. 

I'm gonna to check up on this 

Freedom Train. 

If my children ask me, Daddy, please explain 

Why a Jim Crow stations for the Freedom Train? 

What shall I tell my children? 

You tell me, cause freedom ain't freedom when a man ain't free. 

My brother named Jimmy died at Anzio 

He died for real, and it wasn't no show. 

Is this here freedom on the Freedom Train really freedom or a show again? 

Now let the Freedom Train come zooming down the track 

Gleaming in the sunlight for white and black 

Not stoppin' at no stations marked COLORED nor WHITE, 

Just stoppin' in the fields in the broad daylight, 

Stoppin' in the country in the wide-open air 

Where there never was a Jim Crow sign nowhere, 

And No Lilly-White Committees, politicians of note, 

Nor poll tax layer through which colored can't vote 

And there won't be no kinda color lines 

The Freedom Train will be yours 

And mine. 

Then maybe from their graves in Anzio 

Black men and white will say, We want it so! 

Black men and white will say, Ain't it fine? 

At home they got a Freedom train, 

A Freedom train, 

That's yours and mine!


	20. "Sleeping on a Night of Autumn Rain" by Bai Juyi

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [source](http://www.chinese-poems.com/bj3.html)  
> complete credit goes to the original author

It's cold this night in autumn's third month,  
Peacefully within, a lone old man.  
He lies down late, the lamp already gone out,  
And beautifully sleeps amid the sound of rain.  
The ash inside the vessel still warm from the fire,  
Its fragrance increases the warmth of quilt and covers.  
When dawn comes, clear and cold, he does not rise,  
The red frosted leaves cover the steps.


	21. "Dulce et Decorum Est" by Wilfred Owen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> complete credit goes to the original author  
> [source](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46560/dulce-et-decorum-est)

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,  
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,  
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,  
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.  
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,  
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;  
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots  
Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling  
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,  
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling  
And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.—  
Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,  
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams before my helpless sight,  
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace  
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,  
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,  
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;  
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood  
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,  
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud  
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—  
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest  
To children ardent for some desperate glory,  
The old Lie: _Dulce et decorum est  
Pro patria mori._


	22. "i carry your heart with me(i carry it in" by E.E. Cummings (1952)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [source](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/49493/i-carry-your-heart-with-mei-carry-it-in)  
> complete credit goes to the original author

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in  
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere  
i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done  
by only me is your doing,my darling)  
i fear  
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want  
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)  
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant  
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows  
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud  
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows  
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)  
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)


	23. "Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven" by W.B. Yeats

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [source](https://poets.org/poem/aedh-wishes-cloths-heaven)  
> complete credit goes to the original author

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,  
Enwrought with golden and silver light,  
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths  
Of night and light and the half light,  
I would spread the cloths under your feet:  
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;  
I have spread my dreams under your feet;  
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.


	24. from "The Great Dictator" by Charlie Chaplin (1940)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [source](https://www.charliechaplin.com/en/articles/29-the-final-speech-from-the-great-dictator-)  
> complete credit goes to the original author

I’m sorry, but I don’t want to be an emperor. That’s not my business. I don’t want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone - if possible - Jew, Gentile - black man - white. We all want to help one another. Human beings are like that. We want to live by each other’s happiness - not by each other’s misery. We don’t want to hate and despise one another. In this world there is room for everyone. And the good earth is rich and can provide for everyone. The way of life can be free and beautiful, but we have lost the way.

Greed has poisoned men’s souls, has barricaded the world with hate, has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical. Our cleverness, hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery we need humanity. More than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost….

The aeroplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men - cries out for universal brotherhood - for the unity of us all. Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world - millions of despairing men, women, and little children - victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people.

To those who can hear me, I say - do not despair. The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed - the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress. The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish. …..

Soldiers! don’t give yourselves to brutes - men who despise you - enslave you - who regiment your lives - tell you what to do - what to think and what to feel! Who drill you - diet you - treat you like cattle, use you as cannon fodder. Don’t give yourselves to these unnatural men - machine men with machine minds and machine hearts! You are not machines! You are not cattle! You are men! You have the love of humanity in your hearts! You don’t hate! Only the unloved hate - the unloved and the unnatural! Soldiers! Don’t fight for slavery! Fight for liberty!

In the 17th Chapter of St Luke it is written: “the Kingdom of God is within man” - not one man nor a group of men, but in all men! In you! You, the people have the power - the power to create machines. The power to create happiness! You, the people, have the power to make this life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure.

Then - in the name of democracy - let us use that power - let us all unite. Let us fight for a new world - a decent world that will give men a chance to work - that will give youth a future and old age a security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power. But they lie! They do not fulfil that promise. They never will!

Dictators free themselves but they enslave the people! Now let us fight to fulfil that promise! Let us fight to free the world - to do away with national barriers - to do away with greed, with hate and intolerance. Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men’s happiness. Soldiers! in the name of democracy, let us all unite!


	25. "in transience" by cloudbear

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> original work; written March 2019  
> \---  
> ok so basically this was supposed to be a song but I don't know anything about writing music so I figured I would just post it as a poem. the idea is that the last stanza would be the chorus, and you would repeat it after each of the first four stanzas but change out "next year" with the next season, so it would go "springtime," "summer," "autumn," and end with "winter." the chorus was too long compared to the verses, but when I tried to extend the verses it sounded too monotonous. basically to be an actual functioning song it would need a big overhaul.  
> for reference, I was going for a Sufjan Stevens vibe. sadly I can't sing to save my life, either :,)  
> MY POINT IS it sounds very simplistic because I intended it to be sung, so -- not my best writing!

I kiss you in the cold;  
Your cheeks are snowy roses.  
Your scarf tickles my chin,  
The frost freezes our noses.

I hold you in the rain;  
We stand counting the hours.  
There's dewdrops on your skin  
From all the April showers.

I trace your golden freckles  
Under my fingertips.  
I love to draw the laughter  
From your sun-kissed lips.

Your windswept hair is blowing,  
Your eyes reflect the moon.  
The leaves fall through our fingers  
As we hum this little tune.

And I will carry thoughts of you  
All through the next year, too,  
And I hope when we grow old  
All our stories will be told.


	26. "Sonnet 130" by William Shakespeare

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [source](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45108/sonnet-130-my-mistress-eyes-are-nothing-like-the-sun)  
> complete credit goes to the original author

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;   
Coral is far more red than her lips' red;   
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;   
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.   
I have seen roses damasked, red and white,   
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;   
And in some perfumes is there more delight   
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.   
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know   
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;   
I grant I never saw a goddess go;   
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground.   
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare   
As any she belied with false compare.


	27. INTERLUDE: eight quotes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> complete credit goes to the original authors  
> I won't be individually sourcing each quote, but if you would like a source I can find one. :^)  
> 

**"If I make better work later, I still won’t work otherwise than now; I mean it will be the same apple only riper — I myself won’t turn from what I’ve thought from the start. And this is why I say for my part, if I’m no good now, I won’t be any good later either — but if later, then now too. For wheat is wheat, even if it looks like grass at first to townsfolk — and the other way round too."**

  * _Vincent van Gogh_



 

**"Well, I don't know how many years on this Earth I got left. I'm gonna get real weird with it."**

  * _Frank Reynolds,_  It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia



 

**"Why does the third of the three brothers, who shares his food with the old woman in the wood, go on to become king of the country? Why does James Bond manage to disarm the nuclear bomb a few seconds before it goes off rather than, as it were, a few seconds afterwards? Because a universe where that did not happen would be a dark and hostile place. Let there be goblin hordes, let there be terrible environmental threats, let there be giant mutated slugs if you really must, but let there also be hope. It may be a grim, thin hope, an Arthurian sword at sunset, but let us know that we do not live in vain."**

  * _Terry_ _Pratchett_



 

**"The desire to be loved is the last illusion. Give it up and you will be free."**

  * _Margaret Atwood_



 

**"When another person makes you suffer, it is because he suffers deeply within himself, and his suffering is spilling over. He does not need punishment; he needs help. That's the message he is sending."**

  * _Thích Nhat Hanh_



 

**"It is the mysticism of happiness. That is to say, it is the conception that as a man lives upon a borderland he may find himself in the spiritual or supernatural atmosphere, not only through being profoundly sad or meditative, but by being extravagantly happy. The soul might be rapt out of the body in an agony or sorrow, or a trance of ecstasy; but it might also be rapt out of the body in a paroxysm of laughter."**

  * _G.K. Chesterton_



 

**"She realized, then, something she had never fully understood before. She'd always wondered what had led her father to turn to the dark side, to become Darth Vader. She'd imagined it came from ambition, greed, or some other venal weakness. Never had she considered that the turn might begin in a better place, out of the desire to save someone or to avenge a great wrong. Even if it led to evil, that first impulse might be born out of loyalty, a sense of justice, or even love."**

  * _Claudia Gray,_  Bloodline



 

**"The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something."**

  * _Kurt Vonnegut_



 

 

 


	28. "The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner" by Randall Jarrell

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [source](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/57860/the-death-of-the-ball-turret-gunner)  
> complete credit goes to the original author

From my mother’s sleep I fell into the State,  
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.  
Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,  
I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.  
When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.


	29. "Sea Fever" by John Masefield

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [source](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/54932/sea-fever-56d235e0d871e)  
> complete credit goes to the original author

I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,  
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by;  
And the wheel’s kick and the wind’s song and the white sail’s shaking,  
And a grey mist on the sea’s face, and a grey dawn breaking.

I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide  
Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;   
And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,  
And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying.

I must go down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life,  
To the gull’s way and the whale’s way where the wind’s like a whetted knife;  
And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover,  
And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick’s over.


	30. "The Ocean" by Nathaniel Hawthorne (1833)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [source](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/57286/the-ocean)  
> complete credit goes to the original author

The Ocean has its silent caves,  
Deep, quiet, and alone;  
Though there be fury on the waves,  
Beneath them there is none.

The awful spirits of the deep  
Hold their communion there;  
And there are those for whom we weep,  
The young, the bright, the fair.

Calmly the wearied seamen rest  
Beneath their own blue sea.  
The ocean solitudes are blest,  
For there is purity.

The earth has guilt, the earth has care,  
Unquiet are its graves;  
But peaceful sleep is ever there,  
Beneath the dark blue waves.


	31. "Answers/Truth" by cloudbear

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> original work; written circa 2017

I knocked on the door; you answered.  
You said hello, a question in your voice,  
as if we had never spoken.

I asked if you knew me; you answered.  
You told me the truth, which was  
not what I wanted to hear.

Snow falls on a mountain,  
rivers run across continents,  
the seasons change.


	32. "you took a lighter to my heart" by cloudbear

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> original work; written september 2019

you took a lighter to my heart  
threw my soul into purgatory  
burned me, incinerated me  
until all that was left was the tinder  
of memories that had long been  
lost beneath smoldering ash

you cauterized those old wounds  
that had interminably bled  
the clots cutting off my oxygen  
singed away in a new pain  
the scorching ache of a scar  
newly begun to heal  
carved out in testament to  
injuries suffered once upon a time

the course has yet to run smooth  
there are days when the tides  
threaten to capsize us both  
only we are together against the torrent  
together when the waves swell and sigh  
together when the waters are still  
together when nothing is left  
save for the beating of these twin hearts


End file.
